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He says he was fired for criticizing Bevin’s Medicaid plan. UK dentist gets day in court.

Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)

Oct. 01--A University of Kentucky dean will have to face a jury trial on charges he caved to unhappiness from Gov. Matt Bevin's administration and fired a professor who criticized the governor's plan to roll back Medicaid benefits.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Weir called the case "the epic story of academic intrigue and the place of free speech" at the UK College of Dentistry and required a trial to see if Dean Stephanos Kyrkanides breached the First Amendment rights of long-time dentistry professor Raynor Mullins when he ended Mullins' post-retirement appointment in 2017.

"We are disappointed in the decision," said UK spokeswoman Kristi Willett. "We look forward to our day in court."

The lawsuit alleges that Mullins, 74, a former chair of the department of community dentistry and 40-year veteran of dental public health who also worked at the UK Center for Oral Health Research, made public comments along with four colleagues in July 2016 that were critical of the proposal to roll back parts of the Medicaid expansion made under the Affordable Care Act during former Gov. Steve Beshear's administration. The waiver would have curtailed or eliminated dental benefits.

According to legal documents, someone from Bevin's administration called UK officials, who then expressed the administration's displeasure to Kyrkanides. The person who allegedly called UK has never been identified. When the lawsuit was filed in August, 2017, a Bevin spokeswoman denied the claims that anyone from Bevin's office had pressured UK.

UK spokesman Jay Blanton did contact the governor's office on the day the comments appeared, according to his deposition in the Mullins case file. The court record includes an email from Blanton's personal Gmail account to former Bevin spokeswoman Jessica Ditto on her personal Gmail account. "Simply wanted you to know," Blanton wrote in the email. "As you know, the college and the university are not speaking out on these issues, but individual professors -- as they often inclined to (sic) -- often opine and don't ask for or need our permission."

Catherine Easley, then-deputy chief of staff for external affairs, responded back to Blanton on her private Gmail account: "good to know -- thanks for the heads up jay! let us know if you need anything!"

Although Kyrkanides, who is still the dean, denies he changed his attitude toward Mullins after the public comments, Weir notes "there is plenteous evidence of a strong negative reaction by Kyrkanides," with the dean telling Mullins to "get off radar" about the waiver. One of Mullins' colleagues, Ted Raybould, testified that Kyrkanides said that Mullins "had to go," and oral health department chair Larry Cunningham said Kyrkanides told him that Mullins was not to be involved in public health projects at the college.

Weir also agreed with Mullins' assertions that Kyrkanides had tried to cause trouble between Mullins and other professors, describing one email chain about Mullins as "a dense example of academic logomachy, but one rational take is that the emails show the Dean stirring up false dissension between Raybould and Mullins."

In January, 2017, Mullins was informed that his post-retirement was finished because he had not secured more grant funding to support it.

"If Mullins's version is correct, the Dean targeted him and ensured he would have no position at the UKCOD, come academic year 2017 -- 18, because Mullins had engaged in public advocacy over the Medicaid waiver," Weir wrote in his opinion. "A jury must sort fact from fiction."

"The judge got it right," said Joe Childers, Mullins' attorney. "We had many depositions that were taken which confirmed the underlying premise that Dr. Mullins was punished for speaking out. "We look forward to getting our day in court."

Bevin's proposal would raise premiums and create job requirements for recipients of the ACA's Medicaid expansion, which provided 400,000 people with insurance, reducing the state's uninsured population from 20 percent to 7.5 percent. Bevin said the changes were necessary for financial sustainability.

In June, a federal judge in Washington, D.C, struck down the waiver, saying that Bevin's plan to require work or volunteering in order to receive Medicaid benefits could harm some people by cutting off their health insurance. The waiver is now back with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for further review.